Search - Happily Ever After on DVD

Love and Marriage...and other consequences

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 10/24/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants" ("Happily Ever After") is a cleverly written examination of contemporary views on love, lust, marriage, infidelity, and the single life. Writer/Director/Actor Yvan Attal has come up with a winner, an entertaining, funny, and ultimately thoughtful treatise on how we cope with partnering.

Three men work together in a car dealership. Vincent (Yvan Attal) is the apparently happily married man with a beautiful wife Gabrielle (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and child. Georges (Alain Chabat) on the other hand is in a tumultuous marriage with Nathalie (Emmanuelle Seigner) who has gender issues that go far beyond feminism and negatively influence their child. Fred (Alain Cohen) is single, bedding every lovely woman he encounters, balancing trysts between mornings, afternoons, and evenings and is deeply envied for his Don Juanism. But Fred actually longs for the sense of belonging that married men enjoy.

The men's lives intertwine on many levels. Most important, we discover that Vincent has a lover (Angie David) despite his idyllic married life and while it is Georges whom one would expect to seek solace from a lover, he remains faithful to his nagging wife! Gabrielle senses Vincent's affair and encounters a sexy man in a music shop (Johnny Depp) who begins to preoccupy her thoughts. She is a real estate broker and comes close to an assignation with a client but remains faithful. All the while she daydreams about her brief encounter with Depp and satisfies her wandering eye with those memories. Fred discovers that one of his paramours is pregnant and happily decides to leap into the married fray. The only 'adults' sharing advice here are Vincent's long married parents (Anouk Aimée and Claude Berri in very welcome comeback cameos!) and it is this 'standard' that adds the final humor to the film.

The manner in which all three men deal with their living situations asks as many questions as it gives answers. Attal finds joy in all forms of coupling and is careful to offer all sides of decisions his characters make in arriving at what provides them happiness. This is a smart movie with terrific twists. There is just enough slapstick (an all out food fight between Vincent and Gabrielle - real life husband and wife team Attal and Gainsbourg - that proves to be one of the fun-loving bits of silliness that binds their marriage) to keep the mood light. Not a profound film, but a joyous French comedy handled by total pros! In French and English with subtitles. Recommended. Grady Harp, October 05"

There are no Happily Ever Afters in this Sophisticated Frenc

G. Merritt | Boulder, CO | 11/06/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a brave, tres Francaise date movie that should leave couples talking afterwards about the provocative issues it raises involving love, marriage, and monogamy. The point of this film is that there are never any guarantees of happiness when it comes to life, love and marriage. Written and directed by Yvan Attal (My Wife Is an Actress), Happily Ever After (Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants, which translates as "And They Got Married and Had Many Children") is a sexy, 2004 French romantic serio-comedy starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and her real-life husband, Attal, with a long cameo appearance by Johnny Depp (who proves his fluency in French). Married with with a young son (Ben Attal, the son of Attal and Gainsbourg), Vincent (Attal) is cheating on his wife, Gabrielle (Gainsbourg), who is contemplating infidelity herself with Johnny Depp, whom she meets at a Virgin megastore while listening to Radiohead's "Creep." Despite their infidelities, real or imagined, the couple still experiences playful moments in their marriage, along with lots of really hot sex. Meanwhile, hotel manager Georges (Alain Chabat) dreams of escapinging his miserable marriage, and French womanizer Fred (Alain Cohen) longs for a monogomous relationship. "You know nothing about married women," he knowningly tells his friends when they complain about their wives. This is a captivating film, despite its message, which seems to be that there are no "Happily Ever Afters" in the real world.

There is much to love about this film, and there are at least five good reasons to experience it.

1. Gainsbourg's performance as Gabrielle carries the film. Knowing her husband is cheating on her, she weeps in Parisian cafes over the state of her her marriage, and then sadly watches as her 5-year-old son would rather flirt with a girl on the bus than spend time with his mother. "You can't love several people at once," she poignantly lectures her son, despite the film's compelling argument to the contrary.

2. There is one scene in the film where Vincent talks on the phone with his mistress (Angie David) who, unbeknownst to her, happens to be sitting at the very next table to Gabrielle in a crowded bistro.

3. There are two memorable elevator scenes in the film, the first in which Vincent and Gabrielle find themselves in a moment of uncontrolled passion, and the other in which Gabrielle fantasizes that she is kissing Depp as the elevator continues to rise into the clouds without ever stopping.

4. There is also a messy food fight scene between Vincent and Gabrielle which culminates in tender sex between the two.

5. Radiohead, the Velvet Underground, and Elvis Presley are prominantly featured in the killer soundtrack.

G. Merritt"

Interesting but disatisfied

T. LAM | 04/03/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I thought this movie was somewhat good, but it was slow at some parts and the end was just a cliff hanger ( I Think). It didn't meet my expectations, but it wasn't horrible either."

Captivating women

B. Andersen | Sydney | 07/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"What is it about the sweep of Charlotte Gainsburg's neck, at just that angle, that can be so utterly captivating?

I loved this film - the ensemble cast - in particular the women - intriguing, fragile, strong, cheeky, sassy.

There is a line in Moonstruck, where Olympia Dukakis comments about why men chase younger women "because they fear death". In this film you feel that insecurity - the fleeting nature of their time - and see the ways in which men might try to deal with that: food fights and infidelity, or a descent into a detached coldness of familiar and monotonous routine.

Saw it at the French film festival in Balwyn and it was my favourite film for the year.


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